The present invention relates to an apparatus for precision trimming and precision cutting elongated bulk, bundled or packaged material, in particular lumber, into desired lengths. More specifically, the present invention relates to an apparatus for precision trimming and precision cross cutting bundles of mill length lumber into one or more strapped or banded bundles of lumber of a desired length, without removing the lumber from its original mill packaged condition.
As is known, it is conventional for lumber mills to provide boards of a substantial length, e.g. 8 to 24 feet, which have been trimmed to a standard foot or sometimes a standard foot and inch measurements. In fact, however, the length of the boards vary, within limits, from the desired cut-process lengths. In order to use such long boards, it is necessary to either trim same to the indicated cut-process length, if a single board of this length is desired or, as is more usually the case, to cut the mill length board into a plurality of boards of desired shorter length or lengths.
In the presently used methods of cross cutting boards of long mill length into a plurality of boards of desired length or lengths, the long mill length boards are individually handled and cut so as to provide the desired shorter lengths. Such a procedure is obviously time consuming and costly, particularly due to the many hours of labor involved. Moreover, even more labor is required in order to sort and stack the cut length of lumber into separate packages which can thereafter be easily handled.